Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2)

by Andrijeski, JC

  It’s perfect, doc. It’s weird enough to be distracting and he likes you. I can tell.

  I sighed, staring at him in annoyance. How did you get him to go along with this insane trade of theirs anyway? Anders and his “two weeks” crap?

  Go along with it? Black met my gaze, his sculpted lips turned in a frown. Lawless lives here, doc. He knows how things work. No one goes against the traffickers here...even the damned military treads lightly around those scary fuckers. He doesn’t have any more choice in “going along with it” than I do.

  Are you sure he’s all right?

  Of course he’s not all right. But talking to him about it isn’t going to help him. You should know that...you’re a shrink. He shrugged, rearranging his weight in the chair. I’ll take him out and get him drunk after you’re gone. We can watch pretty Thai girls shimmy on poles or something...that should distract him.

  I fought the impulse to roll my eyes, conscious we weren’t alone.

  Men, I thought at him instead.

  We have our ways. You have yours. His mind grew more serious. I calmed his light down some already in the kitchen, doc. I wasn’t totally kidding about his heart. It’s not going to do him any favors to go there right now. I’ll stay with him tonight...help him through the call with his daughter. Tomorrow too, if I need to.

  I didn’t answer.

  Mostly because, as much as I hated to admit it, everything he said made sense.

  Well, maybe everything apart from the Thai strip clubs.

  I glanced at Lawless, conscious suddenly of the length of the silence. He smiled at me, taking a sip of tea and reminding me that mine still sat untouched on the coffee table, likely stone cold. Kevin was looking between me and Black when I glanced up from my cup, almost like he knew something had passed between us.

  After a pause, he smiled wider, clasping swollen-knuckled hands between his knees. I still saw the sadness in his eyes, but I felt what Black had been talking about too, that veneer of calm he’d somehow placed over his friend’s mind.

  “He really likes you,” Lawless announced. He glanced at Black. “I wonder if he’s admitted to himself how much.”

  “He has,” Black said somberly.

  I glanced at Black to find him watching me. I let out a low snort, letting him know exactly how much I believed that little flirtation.

  Lawless laughed. “She’s got your number, that’s for sure. If you could have seen him, back when we were in Saigon. He had a different girl for every day of the––”

  “Lawless!” Black sounded genuinely angry. “Shut the fuck up! I mean it.”

  The other man laughed louder, looking at Black. “Oh, you’ve got it bad, boyo. You really do. It’s almost heartwarming...really. Of course, karma dictates that this one chews you up and spits you out. You know that don’t you, Black?”

  Black rolled his eyes. “Lord save me from Buddha’s converts.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less true,” Lawless said, winking at me. He motioned at Black with a finger. “And you’re mixing up your religions again.”

  Black shrugged, his expression sliding back into neutral. He lifted an eyebrow, glancing at me. “Don’t get all philosophical on me, Kev. I’m just being polite. Doc here gets jealous. It’s how I almost got scalped at the pool this morning.”

  My smile faded.

  I fought not to react, but couldn’t keep it off my face entirely.

  Well, I assume I couldn’t, because Lawless broke out in another laugh.

  “I guess someone’s okay with sleeping alone tonight,” he said to Black. “You haven’t learned jack shit about women yet, have you Black?”

  “I was sleeping alone tonight regardless,” Black said at once.

  When I turned to give him a piece of my mind, I stopped short when I saw his expression, biting back the retort forming on my lips. Rather than smug, his face looked cautious again. Moreover, a question lived in his eyes as he studied my expression. It took me a second to realize what it meant. Once I did I found myself fighting not to laugh, if not really in humor.

  He was actually trying to tell me something.

  “Don’t sprain anything with the effort, Black,” I said.

  Lawless grinned, but Black’s gaze didn’t waver.

  “It’s no trouble, doc,” he assured me.

  “You sure about that?”

  “I’m very sure.”

  I let out an overtly skeptical sound, shaking my head.

  I’d appreciate it if you returned the favor, he said in my mind.

  Biting my lip, I glanced at Lawless before staring back at Black, that time in open disbelief. You want to talk about this now? Here? In front of your friend?

  Before you leave? He paused. Yes. Because if we don’t talk about it and you were to go back and spend the night with someone else in San Francisco before we could talk about it...someone like, say, your police pal, Nick... His eyes flickered up, growing perceptibly harder as I gaped at him. I’d be hurt, doc. Really hurt.

  “You are unbelievable,” I said aloud.

  “The question still stands.”

  “What question would that be?” I said coldly.

  “You understood me just fine.”

  “Maybe,” I shot back, gesturing sharply by either side of my face. “Or maybe my head’s so clouded by female hormones and ‘jealousy’ I might not be thinking straight...maybe you need to write it down for me, Black.”

  Lawless laughed again, louder that time.

  When I glanced at him, he looked genuinely amused as he glanced between us. I looked back at Black and was startled to see actual emotion on his face. I couldn’t interpret what that emotion meant exactly, but in those few seconds I didn’t doubt that it was real.

  You’re not the only one who gets jealous, doc, Black sent.

  I shook my head though, exhaling.

  I hadn’t slept yet, I reminded myself. I hadn’t slept in almost forty hours, thanks to Black, and I was about to get back on a plane, where I was unlikely to sleep for about twenty-five to thirty more hours. Remembering that, I rose to my feet.

  “I think I’d better go,” I said. I looked at Lawless, feeling a wash of guilt when I realized how blunt I’d sounded. Somehow, in that brief exchange with Black I’d almost forgotten why we’d come here. “I’m really glad to have met you, Mr. Lawless,” I said, meaning it.

  “Kevin,” he said at once, standing up to face me. “Call me Kevin, Ms. Fox. Please.”

  “Then please call me Miriam,” I said. “And I’m sorry to leave so abruptly, Kevin, I really am...but thanks to my employer here, I have a plane to catch. I don’t want to miss it.”

  I took Kevin’s offered hand in both of mine. Pushing Black out of my head when he didn’t stand, I focused on Kevin alone.

  “I’m so sorry about your grandson,” I murmured, clasping his hands tighter. “But I’m sure he’ll be okay. I’m sure of it.”

  Somehow, just in saying it aloud, the reality hit me again, even though I’d been determined not to pull Kevin back into that place. It hit me hard enough to catch in my throat, and suddenly I was fighting tears for real. I didn’t want to go there, not in front of someone who had real reason to be afraid, but emotion nearly overwhelmed me for those few seconds.

  Black was right. There was no reason not to make this easier for him.

  For that reason alone, I should go.

  I was too exhausted to be of much use to either of them in that.

  I glanced at Black as I thought it, and saw him watching me, his gold eyes once more impossible to read. Even so, it crossed my mind that I might have really hurt his feelings. I don’t know why I thought so; I could see no hint of it on the symmetrical planes of his face, nor in the odd flecks that shone from the depths of his eyes.

  For some reason, I would remember that later, though.

  That I hurt him, I mean.

  Eight

  MINE

  I WAS STILL struggling to pull my head together as
I walked down the steps outside Lawless’s Thai-styled building. Exhaustion had hit me for real––like a truck, really––and practically out of nowhere. Maybe the last of my adrenaline had finally run its course.

  Either way, I found myself looking around at the base of those stairs in a daze, practically hallucinating. I noticed for the first time that the buildings lining the street on either side were mostly a lot more modern and Western in style than Lawless’s own house, which looked older if definitely refurbished. It was a nice neighborhood though, lined with trees and very quiet, with no street vendors I could see, just a few small coffee shops and boutiques.

  Lawless himself had said something when we first walked in about the neighborhood being “gentrified.” He’d muttered something about it being “uglified,” too, but frankly, I didn’t see it, even though the buildings themselves weren’t particularly traditional.

  I glanced up and down the road, looking for the white SUV and our driver, whose nickname was Bia, I was now remembering. Black informed me that most Thais went by nicknames and only used their “real” names for formal events and official documents and so on.

  I didn’t see Bia or the car.

  I began walking down the street towards the main road, thinking maybe it was further down than I’d remembered. I was scanning the parked vehicles, a hand shading my eyes, when, out of nowhere, someone stepped in front of me, blocking the sun.

  Still shielding my eyes, I looked up, a little taken aback by how tall they were.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, not really thinking about the fact that I was speaking English in a non-English-speaking country. “I didn’t see you there, I––”

  It was all I got out.

  If he hit me, I have no memory of his fist, no memory of any pain.

  I don’t remember anything after that shadow blocked my eyes and I spoke to him clumsily in English while I shielded my eyes from a hot Bangkok sun.

  Everything just went...black.

  I WOKE UP sore, in the dark. An oily-tasting rag was tied around my mouth, hurting my jaw from holding it open. I fought to bring my lips together, but couldn’t and gasped, writhing on a thin mattress. My hands were bound over my head. My ankles were bound, too.

  I gasped, fought to scream, but my throat and mouth were completely dry.

  I opened my mind.

  Black! BLACK! HELP ME! HELP ME!

  The response was immediate, nearly blowing out some part of my mind, making me cry out through the gag with the intensity. Black’s presence exploded over me, hot, filled with a panic that vibrated my skin, breaking me out in an instant sweat.

  MIRI! WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?

  I was so relieved a pain rose in my chest, so sharp and raw I couldn’t breathe. Tears came to my eyes. BLACK COME GET ME PLEASE. IT’S DARK. I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM...

  WHO HAS YOU?

  I looked around, but I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything but my own breathing. I could hear something above me but it was faint. Traffic maybe? I strained to listen. Somewhere in another part of the building, I could feel people. Some of them felt like––

  GODS, MIRI...ANSWER ME! WHO HAS YOU?

  I DON’T KNOW...I’M TIED UP. IT’S DARK. I CAN’T SEE ANYTHI––

  A wall fell down over my mind.

  It happened so swiftly, so completely, I lost the breath in my lungs in shock. I couldn’t feel Black anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. It felt like being smothered, like some part of me got locked inside a thick, heavy shroud.

  “No...” I screamed through the gag, in frustration more than anything. “No...”

  I yelled for Black again with my mind, but that deadened space swallowed every sound, every attempt I made to reach him. I felt my mind smack up against those echo-less walls, as if my thoughts had been locked inside a dark box, too.

  Whatever that shroud was, I wasn’t getting through.

  I was still lying there, eyes closed, fighting to get past the block with every effort in my being, when a light was ignited not far from where I lay.

  I let out a shocked gasp, opening my eyes then closing them against the brightness.

  I said ignited, not turned on, because the light looked closer to a torch than a lamp. It sparked as it brightened, long and greenish-yellow, with a strange, liquid green flame that didn’t look quite like fire either. Still, it resembled a torch of some kind...like a green and yellow living light that coiled and sparked around a gunmetal black rod.

  A man stood there, holding it.

  I stared up at his perfectly angled face, questioning if it was real. His bone structure and unnaturally symmetrical features belonged to a sculpture, not a man. He looked like a young Adonis, lovingly rendered with exquisitely high cheekbones, a perfectly-formed jaw and a bow-shaped mouth below sharp violet eyes.

  Those eyes couldn’t possibly real.

  They made even Black’s gold irises look natural.

  He really looked like a painting to me. Like something painted in oil, lit perfectly to replicate the inside of a dungeon behind him. He could be a vampire from an old story, some kind of immortal being chiseled out of rock.

  Only his clothes didn’t fit.

  He wore a dark red T-shirt stained with what might be oil, or might be something else. He wore scuffed combat boots, dark jeans, a gold chain around his neck. He dressed more European than American, but definitely not high-end. He looked like a soldier, like some of the mercs I met in Afghanistan from Eastern and Northern Europe.

  The edges of what looked like a tattoo crawled up one side of his neck, red and dark blue in the odd lighting.

  He watched me, perfectly still. Statue-still.

  I wondered if he was real at all, when he suddenly walked closer, causing me to let out another startled cry, shoving myself backwards with my feet. I lay on a low cot, I could see now, or maybe a bed since the frame was a simple flat pallet, made of dark wood. My hands had been tied together and also to a ring above the head of the cot, so I couldn’t go very far. I tried to free my feet of the rope he’d used to tie my ankles together, but I could barely move those, too.

  He stood over me, still holding the torch, but now that he stood close enough, I could see his chest heaving. His eyes were wide as he stared down at me. I was still watching his face, trying to make sense of the expression there, when he let out a hissing, purring kind of sound.

  Something hit me then.

  Sensation...heat...so intense it sucked in my breath.

  It hit me harder than anything Black had ever thrown at me, more demanding than I could resist. Some part of the man in front of me––or I had to assume it came from him––crashed into me like a starving man trying to get through a door to get to food. Any attempts I made to block him, to get out of his way, just had him slamming into me harder.

  I let out a low groan when he did it again.

  He gasped when I did, forcing my eyes up.

  I met his gaze. He was practically panting now, his lips parted, his eyes glazed. I saw his pupils dilate under the glow of the torch and suddenly wondered if that was all from the dark. I was still staring up at him, wincing as he continued to hit at me with some part of himself.

  He was like Black. He had to be. But what did he want with me?

  Even as I thought it, he let out a low sound, almost a pained one.

  Before I could react, he moved fluidly yet purposefully to the side of the bed, leaning down to jam the black metal end of the torch into some kind of holder. Releasing it at once, he turned towards me, reaching for something behind his back that turned out to be a five-inch knife he must have been carrying in a sheath at his belt. I stared at it, then up at him. I tried to scream at him again through the gag, but he didn’t so much as flinch.

  Resting a knee on the edge of the bed, he reached for me, still moving in that purposeful way. Grabbing hold of the rope tying my ankles together, he yanked my legs out straight and towards him, moving so swiftly I couldn’t do anything
but comply. He was so strong it shocked me, but I didn’t feel anything brutal in the movement either.

  Rather, it was efficient, matter of fact.

  I felt something else there too. Restraint. Some kind of urgency flowed from his hands into my skin. The wall around him was even darker than the one around me though.

  “Patience,” he murmured, that restraint trembling his voice. “Patience, sister...”

  I just lay there, panting, while he sawed through the ropes holding my ankles together with the knife. He did it relatively quickly, but it seemed to take forever––maybe because I spent the whole time looking around the cave-like room, looking for windows, doors, any way out. I felt air from somewhere overhead, but if a window stood there, it had been blacked out.

  The one door I saw stood on the other side of the room.

  The only other furniture the torch illuminated was a wooden table and two scuffed wooden chairs, a small antique table lamp that was currently unlit, a rug, what looked like a rifle case on the floor. I saw clothes poking out of the top of a duffle bag on a bench built into the wall not far from the table. I looked to the other side, and saw what might have been a shrine of some kind. Someone taped pictures to the white, water-warped wall over a low bench covered in candles, then placed a cushion in front. I didn’t recognize any of the images. No Buddha, no Hindu gods or anything I’d seen in Thailand.

  He yanked off the last of the rope and I immediately tried to kick him.

  That barely fazed him, either.

  He caught hold of the foot I’d jerked free and yanked it out straight. Then, right after he released it, he slid swiftly up my body, holding me down with his weight and placing the blade of the long knife against my throat.

  I went totally still.

  He looked down at me. That heat radiated off him now.

  His fingers were hot, gripping me tightly with his free hand.

  “Black had a sister,” he murmured, tracing my throat lightly with the knife. “His very own sister. Gaos di’lalente. What a selfish prick. No wonder he kept you hidden.”